Sulfuric acid is for wussies. Real men use perchloric.
I think the word you want is pusgusting.
I really don’t think this is normal. Just saying.
IMHO as soon as a young person is old enough to reach the top of and safely use a washing machine, he/she is old enough to do laundry. And not just their own. No reason why a 16-year old is not expected to do his share of, say, washing the towels. I would often sort the stuff I wanted washed, and the teenager(s), having already been instructed on what temperature water, bleach or not, etc., had the specific job of washing & drying what I’d put there to be done. The reward for doing so is you have clean clothes to wear and clean, dry towels to use when you wash. A real incentive, though, was the first time one of them found money in the bottom of the washing machine, obviously left in someone’s pocket. I told them that was the laundress’s tip, that obviously whoever did not empty his pockets really didn’t need or want the money.
If they didn’t want to sort and hang up their own clothes, then they got to wear rumpled, wrinkled, dirty clothes. If they don’t want to make the bed, fine, sleep in a mess. I pointed out that if you choose to leave food around, you will get ants and other nasties in your room – maybe even in your bed. I guess I would have drawn the line if there really were roaches crawling out from under the door, though.
Me neither, until my parents moved out of the house while I was away at college.
“mack, I found your magazines.”
:eek:
And a word of warning - some folks say you can make your hands tougher by peeing on them. Best not to let him find out about this.
I’m with ratty and belladonna. At the age of 8 I was not only cleaning up my room and doing my own laundry, I was building furniture and using a router to create decorative trimwork for the exterior of the house. And god help me if I didn’t get it right! Then my mum would send me to bed without any poison … and all we ever got was DRY poison! Then when I got up I had to crawl through broken glass to go to school which was situated in the caldera of an erupting volcano. And if you complained about lava burns, everybody called you a sissy!
My mother used to do this and it drove me NUTS!
Not clean my bathroom, but tell my brother to do some kind of housework/cleaning/chore, and then he wouldn’t do it, or he’d do a purposely awful job of it, and then she’d either
a.) Do it for him, or
b.) Make it one of my chores.
I know why she did it; she’s an old-school wife/mother who thinks that cleaning really isn’t a man’s forte, and it’s “pointless” to try to get him to do it right, so why not make it a woman’s work again? (i.e., she and/or I.)
But why did you, Jess, not make him get down on his hands and knees and scrub all that crap? And not let him up until it’s done right? I wouldn’t have touched that shower with a ten-foot-pole; if he’s old enough to “pretend” to clean the bathroom, he’s old enough to face the music and do it right once he’s busted.
Maybe I’m more bitter about it than I should be, what with all the memories you’ve brought back about having to load the dishwasher/do the laundry/mop the floor/clean the table, etc., etc., just b/c I would “do it right” and dear ol’ brother “didn’t know how.”
:rolleyes:
For all the moms in here: I never made my bed when I was a kid and I still don’t (and I’m 31)
It never bothered me then, it doesn’t now, nor does it bother anyone I know. Who the FUCK cares if your sheets are straight on the bed every day? The only purpose my bedroom serves is exactly that: a room with a bed in it. For sleeping or fucking. Both activities mess up the sheets, and there’s no reason to strighten them out again when you’re done.
I own a house. I take care of it. My car too. I do laundry. I vacuum. I don’t have a dishwasher so I do them by hand. I even clean windows. I am generally a clean person, overall.
Making your bed SERVES NO PURPOSE WHATSOEVER. It does not make the bed CLEAN. It does not make the bed MORE bed-like. All it does is WASTE TIME.
Buncha OCD retentive whackos! 
Vixenation, your room-cleaning experiences match those of my stepdaughter perfectly. Is there any way you could come out to Arlington and maybe give her a couple pointers on getting out of that rut? 
Well, you guys are right – I do do too much around here. For my husband, too. He hasn’t cleaned a toilet or ironed a shirt since we got married. Here’s how I see it – and I admit it’s a retro view – I’m a housewife, it’s my job to do the laundry and cooking and cleaning. It’s my husband’s job to go out and earn the money and it’s the kid’s job to go to school and do whatever else I say. Frankly, this housewife thing is a pretty good gig. For 17 years, I’ve set my own hours and my own standards. I don’t work nearly as hard as my husband does, or for nearly as many hours. I don’t really want them all to know how easy I have it. My kids do know how to do laundry – in fact, when we lived in a travel trailer this summer waiting for our house to close we took the two of them to the laundromat every Saturday and they sorted, washed, dried and folded the whole stack. But now that things are back to normal, I just do all the laundry at once. I clean the house – except for the kid’s bedrooms and bathroom’s. I even do the dishes (well, load the dishwasher) most of the time. Once in awhile I’ll be going out after dinner, or just not feel like doing it, and I’ll tell the kids to load the dishwasher and clean the kitchen for me. They know how. But, I just do it most of the time – they’ll have their whole lives to clean up after themselves. I don’t mind doing it for them while they live here. As I said, it’s my job.
However, I don’t want to deal with that scuzzy shower again. So, when Nick came home, I told him I’d cleaned his shower. He said, “Yeah? Thanks. It was getting pretty bad.”
“Well,” I replied, “Why didn’t you clean it when you were up there yesterday?”
“Oh. I thought you wanted me to clean, like, the toilet and sink in case company comes in. I’m the only one who ever sees the shower, right?”
“OK. In future, when I say, ‘clean the bathroom,’ I mean, ‘clean all the bathroom, including the shower.’ Got it?”
“Sure. No problem.”
As for the magazine and skivvies, I did mention to him that I had cleaned under his bed. My exact words were, “By the way, rake out from under your bed once in a while, too, OK? There were 8 pairs of dirty drawers under there.” It was amusing to watch his eyes register all this – you could see it all passing through his little pea-brain like a movie projector, “Ah, she won’t know what the skivvies were for… Wait a minute? My magazine! My magazine!” And he scampered away upstairs. He’ll find his magazine where I put it – in his sock drawer, with a Post-it attached reading, ‘I suppose you got this for the articles?’
Hee hee. Sometimes I think my real payment for the laundry and cleaning I do for my kids is in the fun I have messing with them.
Ego_Mk2–I’ve recently begun making my bed regularly for the first time ever. Yeah, it gets messed up again each night but the nice smooth surface makes the whole room look less rumpled. Honestly though, the main reason is that my dog always sneaks in there and lays on it during the day. If I didn’t make it up her absolutely charming habit of shedding everywhere would leave me with long black doghair all over my sheets, my PJs and me, instead of just on the coverlet that gets thrown to the floor while I sleep. Yuck!
And CRorex,
But don’t you see–that’s the beauty of it! I don’t really want to deal with sorting this old paperwork, or finding a good spot for this pointless doodad (that would of course become quite essential the second I threw it away)–under the bed it goes, never to be seen again. Problem solved!
I’m with Ego_Mk2. My mom always made me make my bed when I lived at home. I have my own house now, and I keep it spotless - except the bed. Oh the horror! It’s unmade. It really chaps her ass for some reason.
I’ve used that Kaboom stuff that Billy Mays yells about on television. It works absolute wonders. The only issue is that you have to completely spray every bit of what you are cleaning and then let it sit for a while, depending on how dirty & moldy your shower is. You still need a bit of elbow grease, but I was able to take off every bit of that black moldy funk that was on the bottom of the shower.
Costco carries it. I’m not sure about any other stores, though.
Somebody should do a pit thread about Billy Mays (please entertain me if there is one already! 
)
I’M BILLY MAYS! I’M THE LOUDEST, MOST OBNIXIOUS PRODUCT SPOKESPERSON EVER BESIDES THAT PONY-TAILED JACKASS THAT SELLS THE GAZELLE EXERCISE THING!
I never cleaned my room and it drove my mom insane. Eventually, due to the sublime goodness of her soul, she realized that it wasn’t her room and she didn’t have to deal with it. I shut the door and did my own laundry, and she (no doubt still) shudders to think that I climbed into an unmade bed every night. (Note: I never ate in my room so it was alright.)
Oh, a note about making beds: I only started doing it when I moved in with the SO - it’s very hard to share rumpled covers. If you spread them out first it’s easier to divide them appropriately.
And finally, a note about teenaged boys and chores: I had a roommate who was a dear friend and a great guy but who was hopeless at chores because his mother never made him do them, and grossed us out consistently and repeatedly. (e.g. he hung his laundry outside, and forgot about it, and it rained, and many weeks later we found a pair of his tighty-whities in the eaves.) I seriously think it will be a barrier to his ever getting married. I can’t imagine putting up with it.
My stepson is 22, but because he is mentally handicapped, he will always live with us. His mother and I got married not quite six years ago (first marriage for both of us). As well as adjusting to being married, I had to adjust to having a child AND dealing with a special child. For years, I fought against accepting him and his limitations. I say all that to say this:
A few months ago, I just, out of the blue, decided to show him how to do laundry and wash dishes. To my surprise, he picked up both very quickly. Granted, he still needs light supervision (needs help sometimes in sorting clothes, and we try not to have him wash anything sharp or unwieldy), but he does laundry on set days and washes the dishes every night. The end result is that the kitchen stays clean (something his mother and I didn’t do on a regular basis) and doing the laundry is not an all-day affair.
He’s happy because he’s ‘a man’ who’s doing grown-up things. He also had his allowance reinstated, so he REALLY likes that. The house is cleaner thanks to him, and his dad is much happier with him, too.
Just an example to illustrate that if my kid can do it, so can anyone’s. I think.
Olentzero, the turning point for me was when my boyfriend would start to show up unexpectedly. The mortifying thought of him seeing my disgusting room (and the possibility that he might realize I was a slovenly pig instead of a neat, tidy young lady) was enough for me to make sure it was ALWAYS clean. If she doesn’t have friends or a boyfriend dropping by randomly already, I would encourage them to do so at all costs. 
Audrey, my mom is the same way about Taking Care of Babies.
I don’t have any, mind you, but my sister has twins (who’ll be two in May–wow, time flies), and whenever they’re around, I am expected to change diapers, help feed, etc., which I don’t mind, except for the fact that my sister’s husband (who is the father of these children) is NOT expected to help. If he tries (even if he screws up), my mom and sister are so damn grateful you’d think he singlehandedly saved 1,000 children from a burning building. If I refuse to change a diaper, on the other hand, I’m an awful person.
But know what? Two can play at your brother’s little game. The last time (and let me emphasize the last time) I changed my niece, she got a handful of her own poo and before I knew it, shit was everywhere: the changing table, her shirt, her hair, the ointment tube, the wall next to the changing table . . .
My sister swears I did it on purpose. I’ll never tell.
At any rate, I too was a messy teenager, but eventually I grew to hate the mess more than I hated cleaning it up. And I learned early that if I didn’t do my own laundry, I’d end up handing all of my sweaters down to our Miniature Schnauzer. My mom was a BIG fan of scalding hot water!!! Care Instructions be damned!
Sometimes I wonder if she did that on purpose . . .
I used the drill instructor method - a daily inspection of the bedrooms and bathrooms. Beds had to be made every morning. The shower walls and doors squeegeed, and the sink wiped out after every use. The dishes, laundry and other chores were done on a rotating basis. Other chores, such a washing the car or sweeping out the garage could be done for extra money.
Fail an inspection, forget to do your chores = no allowance and/or loss of privileges.
The kids were allowed to switch duties with each other and they were allowed to pay each other to do chores. There were very few instances when they didn’t do what was expected of them.
I, too, started doing my own laundry when I was still a child. (I was 8 or 9, rougly.) It’s a good idea, I think. I was certainly capable. (Nobody died, and I never flooded the basement or set the dryer ablaze!)